LeBron James resides in Miami now, but he lived large between the lines at The Q Thursday in Miami's rout of the Cavaliers.
View full sizeWith his work complete in three dominating and impressive quarters, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade could enjoy the final minutes of the Heat's romp over the Cavaliers Thursday night.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Stranger in a familiar land.
LeBron James used to sit in the corner of the huge home locker room at The Q, next to the room where trainers kneaded sore flesh and taped ankles. On the wall of the dressing stall was a page from a San Antonio newspaper, showing him dunking over Tim Duncan early in the 2006-07 season.
It didn't matter that the Spurs got revenge for that dunk by sweeping the Cavaliers in the NBA Finals that season, or that their box-and-one defense, spearheaded by Bruce Bowen, reduced James to impotence. What mattered was what the picture said about James.
As a boy, James kept a Michael Jordan poster on his bedroom wall, just as did countless others who grew up to be NBA players. But when he grew up, James put his own poster on the locker room wall. He was his own idol.
Now he is with Miami, and Thursday night he was stationed in the cramped, crowded visitors' locker room. The Akron native is like a college freshman, away from home for, really, the first time. But his is an environment in which the unfamiliar home of South Beach is his only respite, nationwide, from being reviled.
He is like Kobe Bryant when Bryant was facing sex assault charges a few years ago. This season will determine whether he has enough mental toughness to cope with being the villain every night.
Against the Cavs, he did just fine with that black hat -- well, make it a black headband -- thing.
As Miami took a 31-23 first-quarter lead, James made his first shot, a 15-foot baseline jumper over Joey Graham, then missed a long three-pointer on his second. He came into the game shooting 28.6 percent from the arc, a career low, and chucked seven more, missing five. The rest, though, was almost all peaks, no valleys.
Miami laid 59 points on Byron Scott's beleaguered team and held a 19-point halftime lead increasing it to a humbling 38 points in the third quarter.
The signature Cavaliers' moment of the forgettable night came when J.J. Hickson went end-to-end for a slam dunk in the early minutes. With his inside position walling off James' chance from a chase-down block, Hickson whipped down a dunk before James could get to the ball with a flailing arm.
The stuff seemed to spur James to strut his own, though.
If you can step outside the bubble of pure venom in which James lives -- and this is not an easy thing to do after his shameful exit and disgraceful Boston series -- and take the performance solely as a display of technical basketball virtuosity, you must admire the game he plays. He scored 38 points with five rebounds and eight assists in Miami's 118-90 rout.
This makes the way his Cavs career ended all the more galling, of course.
Late in the first quarter, he went to the free-throw line, where he has never been very trustworthy, and he stood in the eye of a storm of derision. A chant "Yes, we hate you!" (later "Akron hates you!") was roaring from the stands. James, after making his first free throw, grinned through the protective armor of his mouthpiece at the crowd, then swished the second.
The rout was on by the third quarter. James, a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees and Chicago Bulls as a boy, can front-run with anyone. He scored a ridiculous 24 points in the third quarter, without ever being roughed up or put on his butt by an objecting Cavalier.
He made 10 of 12 shots, scoring on layups and intermediate jumpers, long-distance stuff and at the line. He scored his team's last 13 points. It was a half-Detroit, recalling the 25 straight points he scored in the Eastern Conference Finals in 2007, in what seems like another lifetime.
He soared, and he scored, despite being booed every time he touched the ball. It recalled a fierce first-round series with Boston in 1985, and the abuse the fans showered on Larry Bird.
"If they boo me, I might just have a field day," said Bird, who closed out the Cavs in the next game.
James had his field day. Along the way, he reminded us of how uncommonly well he can play basketball, when he is not impugning the game's integrity and ruining his own.